Later that afternoon he was awakened from an exhausted doze by the sound of shooting. Two prisoners of war had been shot and were being buried by their comrades. One had allegedly been firing dum-dum bullets (doctored rounds designed to splat on impact, causing grotesque wounds). The other apparently opened fire after signalling to surrender. ‘One of them,’ Rupp said, was still alive, because he continued to wheeze even beneath a thick layer of earth, which rose up as an arm worked itself up into the air.’
Four more Russians were ordered to dig another hole. For whom? wondered Rupp. The Russian who had earlier drunk his tea was led forward, made to lie in the hole, and shot by the Unteroffizier – the missing commissar. General Halder’s pre-campaign remarks were becoming ominously prescient. ‘A communist is no comrade before or after the battle. This is a war of extermination.’ Such behaviour was by no means universally acceptable. Rupp pointed out:
‘Differences of out. It was explained the motorcyclist battalion had shot the entire inhabitants of a village, women and children too, and cast them into graves they were made to dig themselves. This was because the whole village had been involved in an ambush that had cost the motorcyclists dearly.’(13)
Panzer soldiers might observe such incidents, but the momentum of meeting engagements kept them moving. Finishing off the enemy was infantry business. Their war was physically removed from the need to close with the enemy. A German staff officer serving with an armoured unit with Army Group South encapsulated the difference with his remarks to war correspondent Curizio Malaparte:
‘He spoke as a soldier, objectively, without exaggeration, without using any argument not of a strictly technical order. “We take few prisoners,” he says, “because they always fight to the last man. They never surrender. Their matériel can’t be compared with ours; but they know how to use it.”’(14)
It was an impersonal matter of suppressing enemy resistance. Battle took up only a fraction of the time expended during even eventful advances. Physical discomfort was the primary consideration.
‘The roar of engines cleaves the red cloud of dust which covers the hills… Icy gusts of wind form sharp ridges in the thick dust. Our mouths are filled with sand, our eyes smart, our eyelids bleed. It is July, and the cold is intense. How many hours have we been on the road? How many kilometres have we travelled?’(15)
Leutnant Horst Zobel’s tank platoon with the 6th Panzer Regiment, part of Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2, travelled 600km between the rivers Bug and Dnieper over 12 days, covering some 50km per day.
‘Sometimes we fought continuously in tanks for 24 hours. This was usually while we were on the march or detailed to a security mission. That does not mean a continuous 24 hours’ fighting. Of course there were always places where the crew could rest or nap. They slept either in the tank or on the rear of the tank, which was pretty warm from the engine. Sometimes they dug holes underneath the tank which provided them secure rest uninterrupted by night bombers often flying over.’(16)
Tank crewmen shared everything. Comradeship was intense, forged sharing common dangers, enduring trying conditions and living intimately together within the confines of a Panzer. Signal, the glossy German news magazine (equivalent to the American Life picture publication) ran an atmospheric article entitled ‘The Five from Panzer Number 11’. It described typical conditions among five crew members of a PzKpfwIV (heavy tank) from Panzer Regiment 15 (with the 11th Panzer Division).
‘These five men, each from totally different practical backgrounds, represent a whole. Each one knows he is, and must be, reliant on the other. Each is a human being, with all the strengths and weaknesses all of us has; but taken together they are a feared and lethal weapon.’
The Panzer commander – ‘Der Alte’ (the old man) – was 21-year-old Leutnant Graf Hyazinth St___ (names withheld in the Signal article) [probably the Oberleutnant Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz referred to earlier], who had joined at the beginning of the war serving in the Yugoslav campaign prior to Russia. His father, from a distinguished family, was a Panzer battalion commander.
The gunner was Unteroffizier Arno B___ who, ‘after every battle, stuck a cigarette in his mouth.’ He was 25 years old with three brothers, all serving in the Wehrmacht, and two sisters. After the war he intended to be a technical salesman, ‘preferably in Africa’. Inside the fighting compartment he was aided by the gun loader Adolf T___. He was an elderly 32-year-old ex-SA (Sturm Abteilung or Nazi party ‘brownshirt’), married, with two young daughters. His first task after any engagement was to swab out the gun barrel.
Tank communications was the responsibility of the radio operator, Walter D___, who had worked on the railways before becoming a regular soldier. He had six brothers, five serving, the eldest of which was a Feldwebel.
Unteroffizier Hans E___, the 26-year-old driver, had earlier been a civil motor mechanic, a trade he intended to resume after the war. He was married and always carried a photograph of his four-year-old son in his pocket.
The five-man crew represented a ‘presentable’ microcosm of Reich society in Signal propaganda terms. Enlisted soldiers earned between RM105 and RM112.50 each month. This might be supplemented by a monthly family allowance of RM150. Most of them saved their money and sent it home. Factory workers by comparison earned an average of RM80 (or RM51.70 for women). It is not known whether this chosen crew survived the campaign. Their statistical chance of avoiding death or injury before the end of the war was remote.(17)
These were ordinary men. ‘The first man of the crew who required a rest during a stop was the driver,’ explained Leutnant Horst Zobel with Panzer Regiment 6. ‘We had to care about him and he was seldom used as security or a sentry mission.’ As a consequence, ‘the tank commander,’ like himself, ‘regardless of rank, unless a company or battalion commander, had to share in those tasks.’ Each depended on the other to survive. As Zobel stressed, in the attack ‘the enemy is always the first to open fire. He fires the first shot and the crew must react.’(18) Everyday life followed a routine regimented by administrative and security tasks interspersed with the intense demands of acting as an integrated and focused team in battle. Typical routine in the 20th Panzer Division, according to one Panzer crewman, meant one was:
‘…always extremely alert. Tanks were stationed forward as security outposts with officers peering through binoculars. The battalion HQ officer comes from regiment with new orders. A few people hastily eat a sandwich. Others lie about and talk about the attack they experienced that morning. Another writes a letter on the radiator bonnet of a vehicle. The commander attempts to work improvements to the camouflage. The adjutant tries to get signatures for paper returns but is fobbed off with the response: “we have no time in summer for the ‘Paper War’.”’(19)